The present invention relates, in general, to couplers for electronic equipment, and more particularly, to smart optical couplers.
It is sometimes desirable to provide communications between two or more electronic devices with optical cables. Optical cables provide extremely large bandwidths which allow tremendous amounts of data to be transmitted at very high speeds. However, the use of optical cables gives rise to a variety of challenges.
It should be understood that typical electronic equipment requires data and other signals in electronic form. In order to use optical cables for the communication of these electrical signals, the electrical signals must be converted into optical signals, and back again into electrical signals. Furthermore, particular types of electronic equipment require data and other electrical signals in corresponding particular formats. For instance, there are a variety of industry standards and specifications to which various equipment are built. Examples are equipment requiring signals and data formatted according to the the industry standard RS 232, as well as equipment requiring signals and data according to the industry standard IEEE 488.
In the past, separate systems have been provided to convert the electrical signals and data into optical signals for transmission over optical cables, and to convert one electrical signal and data format into another, as necessary to interlink various different equipment
What is needed is a way to interconnect differing types of electronic equipment, using optical cable, which does not require one system for reformatting electrical signals and data and a separate system for converting electrical signals to optical signals for transmission over the cable.